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Without an effective technology expense management strategy in place, your organization’s technology expenses could be a complete mess. You could be:
- Paying inflated rates
- Missing billing errors
- Buying excess capacity
It’s time you get a handle on things by using a Technology Expense Management (TEM) provider.
A TEM provider can help you minimize and control your technology expenses by reducing late fees, cutting unnecessary services, preventing budget surprises, confirming invoice accuracy, and more.
And if you opt for a fully-managed TEM solution, the provider will even take care of provisioning, service optimization, inventory, and disputes.
However, not all TEM providers are created equal, which makes it important to understand what distinguishes high-performing TEM providers from the average players in the industry. Below, we’ve shared some tips for scouting out the best of the best. You should make sure that the provider you settle on:
Offers After-Sales Training
Some TEM vendors don’t offer the level of training required to ensure your employees are equipped with the knowledge and skills to use the new solution effectively. Likewise, they may not offer the level of support needed to address company-specific queries. To improve the implementation of your new TEM software, make sure you work with a company that offers the level of training you expect.
Centralizes Asset Management
When it comes to managing your IT assets, you may be using various tools to keep tabs on their movement. This, however, often results in a loss of time and money. A good TEM provider will centralize your technology assets, providing you with a single platform to manage all of your records. Brightfin, for instance, centralizes asset management for all of its TEM clients, including their cloud inventories, fixed-line assets, and mobile assets.
Cost Allocation
Effective invoice management is where the TEM vendor optimizes the allocation of wireless expense and reducing manual input that may result in human errors. Because the collection and adequate payment of monthly invoices can grow more and more challenging, it is essential for a provider to adopt an automated approach to reduce error rates, remove late payment charges and avoid service disruptions.
Offers Managed Services
Self-service is cool, but if your organization deals with high-level technology services, you need an option that can assist with complex problems at the management level. The best TEM vendors tend to offer solutions that are built natively on their enterprise-level platforms, allowing for easy and quick incident management from the native platform.
Provides an Intuitive Solution
Many legacy TEM offerings don’t contain the reporting capabilities or functionality that companies require, increasing the risk of forgoing crucial savings. In your quest for an industry-leading TEM provider, don’t forget to request a demo to gain insight into a solution provider’s usability and robustness. Ideally, your new TEM solution should be cloud-based for flexible accessibility, offer strategic financial planning, and provide several levels of usage (employee vs. admin-level access, for instance).
Is Ready to Answer Mobility-Specific Questions
Industry-leading TEM providers won’t shy away from answering mobility-related questions. So, what type of questions should you ask to judge a vendor’s capabilities? Here’s a quick list that you can use to gauge their level of service:
- Do you notify users of overages before billing is processed?
- How do you know if an employee has stopped using one device and started using another?
- Do the inventory updates occur automatically?
- How are inventory optimizations conducted?
- Does your solution integrate with other enterprise-level software?
- Is there an option for creating custom reports for the data that will be stored in your TEM software?
Keeps Wireless Contracts in a Single Place
Contract management is critical for organizations wanting to ensure that the efforts invested in the negotiation and planning stages are accounted for when the question is about invoicing. The best TEM providers will centralize wireless contracts to help ensure the quick identification of errors. This will also help users ensure the service levels are being complied with on a monthly basis. Also, centralization offers an added benefit by ensuring the commitment levels are being met and measured.
Acts as a Telecom Billing Consultancy
It’s easy for a company to commit errors in telecom billing. Inadequate knowledge and oversight can result in mistakes that can increase your overall telecom expense. As such, try finding a TEM provider who is capable of streamlining operations and offering great accuracy. The best solutions can evaluate the various factors that impact your telecom expenses, enabling you to find pain points before they reach a state where it’s impossible to bring them under control.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, a high-performing TEM provider will not only improve your accountability and reporting but also provide visibility into how you can gain from your technology services moving forward.